Innocent until proven guilty ...
Man imprisoned for not giving police password.
- Thread starter Energize
- Start date
Innocent until proven guilty ...
On the flip side, your position is nearly enough to make me side with Energize et al...
Soldato
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Associate
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Yeah, loop hole in this case.
Some of you are arguing devils advocate, must be.
The law is no place for common sense I guess.
You can't be put on a sex offenders register without proof (i assume). Images that MAY be there do not count as proof as anything. There are any number of reasons why he wouldn't want them to get into his computer, but since they can't prove anything treating him like a pedo before proven guilty would pretty much be wrong before they even start.
Yes its pretty dumb if he has absolutely nothing on there and he's merely standing on principle, but being a 19 year old who feels the need to put a 50 char encryption password on his computer he'll be hiding something illegal, child porn or not, so clearly he doesn't want the authorities to get at it because at this point they'll do him for absolutely anything.
How is it a loophole?
Innocent until proven guilty, right to silence & right to not self-incriminate are basic human rights.
Once again, you don't have the right to silence in a search (you have to open things if requested), and you aren't incriminating yourself by opening something.
You incriminate yourself by possessing something forbidden, not by opening the box it is in.
Associate
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Hes hiding the proof so he's innocent, fine.
Pedantic, self righteous, arrogant, are few words I learnt today, I found out I was self righteous, but I met others who were all three.
Pedantic, self righteous, arrogant, are few words I learnt today, I found out I was self righteous, but I met others who were all three.
My reading of the current law is that if you don't give up an encryption password, you're going to jail. No "I forgot" or "I didn't set up that encryption" about it. That's what I don't like.
Admittedly I've not looked into the particulars of this case, but isn't it more common in cases like this where the person is imprisoned by a judge, a little like contempt? I wasn't aware that you would be tried in front of a jury for "failing to disclose an encryption key".
I agree that the police should be able to gather evidence in an investigation, and warrants are an important part of that. I disagree with a law that makes non-cooperation with the police punishable with jail regardless of whether that non-cooperation is deliberate or unintentional.
To pick another (probably flawed analogy, but I'm trying here
), if a person stands by the side of the road and watches while a car driver criminally runs over a pedestrian, should the police be able to prosecute the witness for not testifying on the basis that they were daydreaming? How do they tell the difference between that and a witness who's a friend of the criminal and decides he doesn't want to testify against his friend? Both actions are non-cooperative with a police investigation, one might be willfully and the other might not be. Is the latter obstruction of justice?
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A box? They can open that any number of ways, brute force or more subtle. Refusing to open it would only end in the box being broken... its not in the same league as a computer encryption.
You can be sent to prison for refusing to give the key for said box.
If you can provide reasonable evidence that you do not know where the key is, then you are unlikely to be punished for it, just like with RIPA act III.
Of course, the plausible deniability of having a large, encrypted volume that you couldn't access on your PC is rather slim...
Exactly LOL.
I hate using passwords which are longer than 6 characters long, let alone 50. Another problem with those long passwords is that if you make a single error, you have to type the damn thing out all over again, as you have no idea (due to the asterisks), which character is incorrect.
Soldato
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All evidence to a crime is stored on an encrypted USB, by opening it you would be incriminating yourself by provinding evidence, and that would basically be the equivilent of acusing yourself of a crime.
Under UK law, you don't have to prove you're innocent.
In civilized society, the natural reaction on being charged with a crime is not to turn over your life, your possessions and all information you possess to the police in some grand idealized hope that they'll "do the best for you".
See, I'd argue it the other way round. You shouldn't have to prove that you can't find the key, the police should be required to prove that you have the means but are wilfully uncooperative.
Soldato
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If they had substantial and convincing proof then he would most likely have been convicted despite him not giving the password to the hard-drive. The fact he wasn't convicted would suggest they lack evidence. We have a system of innocent until proven guilty, and a right to silence. He has not been proven guilty, and serving 6 weeks rather than divulge the contents of his hard-drive doesn't proove guilt on the paedophilia charge.
There are plenty of reasons why he might not want the police looking through his hard-drive. Perhaps he is a porn fiend and has volume upon volume of pirated stuff there. Millions of people download illegally and it would appear he probably uses the internet a lot. For all the "nothing to hide" crowd know he could, probably correctly, be scared the police will try and charge him for that if they do not find any convincing evidence of child pronography.
That's what a lot of pressure groups have tried to claim, it's not actually how the law reads though.
Perhaps, I forgot that Labour changed it so you couldn't always have a jury trial.
The law allows for that, it isn't written absolutely. Of course, the 'forgotten' defence is going to fail regularly because it's so obvious, but no doubt you could make it stick with enough effort.
To pick another (probably flawed analogy, but I'm trying here
There are already laws on the books that allow people to be prosecuted for non-cooperation though
Any examples how one would go about proving their innocence? (sounds funny writing that sentence!)
Forgetting a 50 character password is plausible in my opinion. Same applies if said password was written on a post-it note next to the computer before the police came in and siezed everything but has since disappeared.
When I was playing around with truecrypt a couple of years ago I created many containers as part of my testing. If I didn't delete those containers at the time I highly doubt I could remember the passwords now.
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I want to know how they know it's a 50 char password.